He transmitted ḥadith from Sharik, Abū al-Aḥwaṣ, Jarīr ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, Hushaym ibn Bashīr, Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, Ḥumayd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Ṭalḥah ibn Yaḥyā al-Zurāqī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak, ʿAlī ibn Mushir, ʿAbdah ibn Sulaymān, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUlayyah, Abū Muʿāwiyah, Wakīʿ, Ibn Fuḍayl, Yaḥyā ibn Ādam, ʿAffān, Abū Nuʿaym, Yazīd ibn Hārūn, and many others.
Those who reported from him include al-Bukhārī and Muslim—both of whom relied upon his narrations in their Ṣaḥīḥs—Abū Dāwūd and Ibn Mājah in their Sunans, Abū Ḥātim, al-Fasawī, Ibrāhīm al-Ḥarbī, Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Ṭālib, Baqī ibn Makhlad, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Marwazī, Zakariyyā “the tailor of the Sunnah,” Abū Yaʿlā, al-Firyābī, al-Baghawī, Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṣūfī together with his son—the ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān—Muṭayyin, and a great many others.
When Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal was asked about him he commended him, saying, “I know nothing but good about him.” Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn said, “Reliable, trustworthy.”
I say: There is no doubt he was a ḥāfiẓ, precise and exacting, yet in spite of the breadth of his knowledge he alone narrated two objectionable reports from Jarīr al-Ḍabbī; I have cited them in my book Mīzān al-Iʿtidāl (1). Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal was displeased with him for having related those two ḥadiths.
Despite his reliability he had a jocular temperament, joking even about slips that appear in written copies of the Noble Qurʾān—may Allah pardon him.
Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Ṭālib recounted: “I visited him and he said to me, ‘How long is Isḥāq ibn Rāhūyah going to stay alive?’ I said, ‘An elder such as you wishes for that?’ He replied, ‘Leave me; if he were to die…’”